OntoDM-core - Ontology of Core Data Mining Entities

Background

In data mining, the data used for analysis are organized in the form of a dataset. Every dataset consists of data examples. The task of data mining is to produce some type of a generalization from a given dataset. Generalization is a broad term that denotes the output of a data mining algorithm. A data mining algorithm is an algorithm, that is implemented as computer program and is designed to solve a data mining task. Data mining algorithms are computer programs and when executed they take as input a dataset and give as output a generalization.

In this context, the OntoDM-core sub-ontology formalizes the key data mining entities needed for the representation of mining structured data in the context of a general framework for data mining (Dzeroski, 2006).

Design

OntoDM-core is expressed in OWL-DL , a de facto standard for representing ontologies. The ontology is being developed using the Protege ontology editor. The ontology is freely available at this page and at BioPortal.

The application of these design principles enables cross-domain reasoning, facilitates wide re-usability of the developed ontology, and avoids duplication of ontology development efforts. Consequently, OntoDM-core imports the upper-level classes from the BFO version 1.1 and formal relations from the OBO Relational Ontology and an extended set of RO relations.

Following best practices in ontology development, the OntoDM-core ontology reuses appropriate classes from a set of ontologies, that act as mid-level ontologies for OntoDM-core. These include the

Ontology Structure

Having all three layers represented separately in the ontology will facilitate different uses of the ontology. For example, the specification layer can be used to reason about data mining algorithms; the implementation layer can be used for search over implementations of data mining algorithms and to compare various implementations; and the application layer can be used for searching through executions of data mining algorithms.